How Cloud Adoption, Challenges Are Taking Shape

Top Enterprise Cloud Services Being Used

A full 68.8 percent of all cloud data is in an enterprise-class cloud. The top five enterprise cloud services are Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Office365, Salesforce, Cisco WebEx, and Concur.

The Concentrated Cloud

The big get bigger in the cloud. A full 80% of data uploaded to the cloud goes to less than 1% of all services. In fact, that data is uploaded to just 11 consumer and enterprise-grade cloud services.

Number of Cloud Services Used Increases

Overall, there has been a 52% increase in the last 12 months. The average number of cloud services being used increased from 738 to 831.

File and Collaboration Services

There isn't much in the way of a de facto standard. On average, companies are using 35 different file-sharing services and 125 different collaboration services.

Cloud Security Still Needs Work

Cloud security is still probably better than on-premise security. But Skyhigh found only 9.5% of all services met the most stringent security requirements last quarter. There are now 429 of these services available, versus just 343 last quarter.

Limited Cloud Security Options

Encryption is not nearly as widely deployed as it should be. Only 2.9% of services enforce strong password policies, and only 1% encrypt data with tenant-owned encryption keys. A full 78.1% of services encrypt data in transit, while 10.1% encrypt data at rest.

Cloud Certifications Improve

Customers are starting to value cloud certifications. One fifth (21.2%) of services now have one or more certificationssuch as SAS 70, SSAE16 or ISAE 3402and 39.5% have third-party penetration testing of their services.

The Cloud Enforcement Gap

IT organizations think they are blocking cloud services when they are not. At 59%, the enforcement gap is highest for Dropbox, followed by Instagram (44%), Tumblr (42%) and Apple iCloud (41%).

Although the use of cloud services is expanding, large amounts of data are being uploaded to just a small number of service providers, according to the third-quarter Cloud Adoption & Risk report from cloud monitoring and management specialist Skyhigh Networks in partnership with the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). The majority of cloud data is finding its way into 11 cloud services, according to the study. The paradox is that the number of cloud services actually being used has increased from 738 to 831. The report also finds that not only are 71 percent of IT pros unaware of the amount of cloud use inside their organizations, there is a major gap in terms of the services that IT organizations think they are blocking and what end users are actually invoking. The good news is that overall cloud security picture is improving, albeit slowly. All told, increased reliance on the cloud creates an opportunity for solution providers in the channel that can help bring usage of these services back under IT control—assuming, of course, the customers truly have the political will inside their organizations to take on that challenge.